Michael Dibdin: Dirty Tricks

I drew my hand back.

‘Of course!’ I cried. ‘I get it! I was the stooge, the decoy! That’s why Alison took me to that restaurant that night, knowing that you and Lynn would be there. And that’s why you invited us both to dinner right afterwards. It was all designed to divert Lynn’s suspicions from you and Alison.’

So potent was Thomas Carter’s aura of moral righteousness that I half-expected him to deny the whole thing and claim that he and Alison were just rehearsing a scene from a bedroom farce for a local amateur dramatic society production. I was really quite shocked when he calmly admitted the whole thing. Yes, he and Alison had been in love for several years, but they had kept it secret so as not to upset the children. Once or twice a month Rebecca and Alex were packed off to sleep over with friends the night the madrigal group met, leaving Thomas and Alison free to ‘make music together’. Just when Lynn had started to become suspicious, I had conveniently appeared on the scene. Alison had taken advantage of my infatuation as a cover behind which she and Thomas could continue their affair in safety.

‘Anyway,’ he concluded, ‘the real question is what we’re going to do about you now, my friend. What the fuck are you doing here anyway?’

‘I was beside myself with frustrated desire. I was going to strip naked, put on that dressing-gown and toss myself off to a cracked seventy-eight of Nellie Melba singing “Come into the Garden, Maude”. Do you ever get urges like that?’

For a moment I thought he was going to hit me again. Then he grinned, showing his bad teeth.

‘Of course I could just call the police and have you charged with breaking and entering.’

‘But you won’t, because then you’d have to explain what you’re doing here at this time of night. Look, why don’t we just pretend this never happened?’

Carter shook his head.

‘You can expose Ally and me any time you want. I can’t risk that.’

‘So what are you going to do, kill me?’

He looked at me for a moment as though considering the idea. It was the first time I had ever been regarded as a potential victim by someone who was capable of making me one. I must say it was very uncomfortable.

Carter’s face suddenly cleared.

‘I know! Alison told me about you asking her to fake an alibi. Well I’ll do the opposite. I’ll contact the cops and tell them that the Saturday your wife disappeared I went round to your house to keep an appointment we’d made, only you weren’t there. I tried several times that afternoon. Your car wasn’t in the garage, so I figured you’d gone out. I even rang later that evening, but there was still no reply.’

I stared at him blankly.

‘If you do that …’

‘Yes?’ he said with menacing emphasis.

I sighed.

‘Then I’m fucked.’

We both burst out laughing.

‘Now get the hell out of here,’ he said, ‘so I can get this goddamn housecoat off.’

I stepped over the broken glass to the back door. As I unbolted the door he added, ‘You know the funny thing? We all liked you. We really did.’

I jumped forward like a parachutist, obliterating myself in the night.

The next day I rang my broker and instructed him to liquidate the bulk of my investments and transfer the funds to an off-shore bank account. I had just hung up when the doorbell rang. A police car was parked outside the house. On the front doorstep stood a bulky, balding man in a heavy overcoat, his back turned to me. It looked like Moss. The doorbell rang again, more insistently. I crouched down behind the sofa. The doorbell rang again and again. Finally he gave up and the car drove away.

I ran upstairs and set about packing. It didn’t take long. I threw a selection of clothes and some toilet accessories into a suitcase, checked I had all the relevant documents, then showered and changed into a sober business suit, Jermyn Street shirt and old college tie. Before leaving, I indulged a long-standing desire to pee on the Parsons’ orange-tawny velveteen sofa. It was extraordinarily satisfying, and I was giggling as I walked out to the BMW.

The last-minute hitch has become such a thriller cliche that I was amazed to reach Heathrow without incident. Traffic on the M25 was even flowing freely, for a wonder. Inside the terminal the information board was fluttering like a flock of nervous pigeons. When it settled I selected a Varig flight to Rio de Janeiro which was leaving in two hours. There was plenty of room in first class, and it was an added luxury to pay with a credit card for which I would never receive a statement.

I put up at a luxury hotel in Copacabana while I made the necessary arrangements to draw on my off-shore bank account, then made my way here. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the recent currency devaluations had made me even wealthier than I had expected. Less than a month after my departure from Ramillies Drive, I moved into a pleasant furnished apartment in the fashionable Buena Vista district.

What a pleasure it was to be back! It was the small things I noticed most, the details I had forgotten. The constant rain of drips in the street from air-conditioning units, the puddles of condensation that form around your bottle of cold beer in the humid heat, the parked car that seems to move all by itself as someone further along bumps the whole row to get out, the streets studded with crown stoppers embedded in the warm asphalt. Above all it was the people, the men very beautiful, the women very handsome, both sexes pulsating with pride and drive and desire. Each moment of every day was a precious token of a way of life which I only now realized how much I had missed. I spent days at a time simply walking the streets or riding the collectivos , immersing myself in the rich and varied scenes on every side. Every night I would seek out the most crowded districts and mingle in the passing throng, exulting in the brutal, explicit, merciless, uncensored scenes I had been reading for too long in the ‘improved’ and improving versions which the English prefer to the original text.

My only regret was that the friends I had been looking forward to seeing again all seemed to have disappeared. I had been away for some time, of course, but it still seemed surprising that the entire group of which Carlos Ventura was the acknowledged leader had totally dispersed. Even many of the places where we used to meet, bars, restaurants and bookshops, had closed down or changed hands. It was almost as if a deliberate attempt had been made to erase all my memories. This absurd notion was strengthened when I bumped into one of my former students who had been on the fringes of the group I’ve just referred to. At first he claimed not to recognize me, so to jog his memory I mentioned a mistake in one of his essays which had become a running joke around the school. It was a piece describing the system of government. Jose had intended to say ‘the council of generals are responsible for running the country’, but instead of ‘running’ he had written ‘ruining’. To my amazement, he now denied any knowledge of this incident, and when I asked what had become of Carlos and the others he replied angrily that he had no idea who I was talking about, and abruptly took his leave.

I was mystified and saddened at first, but I soon convinced myself that it was all for the best. Any attempt to revive old friendships would have been doomed to failure. My circumstances had changed too much. Then I had been a temporary expatriate, a visiting foreigner with no means, no roots, no responsibilities and no future, here today and gone tomorrow. Now I am a man of substance, a permanent resident with long-term plans and investments. I no longer have anything in common with people whose idea of entertainment was an evening of beer, jazz and politics at some doubtful dive which a respectable citizen such as myself would think twice about entering.